News Archives · Page 2

New Course: How to Create Custom Forms in WordPress with Ninja Forms

We’ve just released a brand new course for the popular Ninja Forms plugin for WordPress! Learn how to create custom forms for your WordPress site in minutes with the Ninja Forms plugin in this brand new, 18-part video tutorial course by WP101.

Ninja Forms is easily one of the most powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use form builder plugins for WordPress. In this hour-long course, we’ll show you how you to install and use the Ninja Forms plugin to build just about any type of form you can imagine — from simple contact forms to event registrations, file uploads, payments, and more!

Ninja Forms has been downloaded more than 11 million times, and is currently in use on more than a million WordPress sites! And it’s no wonder… Ninja Forms is a breeze to use. You can get download the free plugin and get started in less than two minutes.

And when you dive into it, you’ll quickly find that it’s one of the most powerful and flexible WordPress form builders available for WordPress today! Out of the box, Ninja Forms includes over a dozen pre-built templates to help you quickly create common types of forms for your site with just a few clicks. Or, you can build completely custom forms in minutes using the simple, ‘drag-and-drop’ form builder.

If you’re a site owner, you’ll love how quickly and easily you can design complex forms… with absolutely no coding required.

But there are also dozens of helpful add-ons to extend Ninja Forms, making it even more powerful. In this new course, we’ll introduce you to several of the most popular add-ons for Ninja Forms, and show you how you can use them to increase form conversions, build a mailing list, collect payments, or connect to your favorite productivity tools.

We partnered closely with the Ninja Forms team over the past couple of months to create this 18-part video tutorial course. In just a little over an hour, you’ll learn how to:

Download, install, and configure the Ninja Forms form builder plugin for WordPress.
Use the easy, drag-and-drop form builder in Ninja Forms to create just about any type of form you need.
Trigger and send an email whenever a form is submitted on your site.
Add a form to a page, blog post, or widget area on your WordPress site.
Create custom, multi-column layouts and styles for your forms.
Create multi-part forms to break long forms into smaller sections for your visitors.
Use conditional logic to create smart, interactive forms that react to your visitor’s actions.
Create a quote request form that changes and adapts to a customer’s needs.
Add a file upload field to your form, enabling your visitors to upload and send files to you.
Use Zapier with Ninja Forms to connect your forms to hundreds of third-party services.
Collect payments with either PayPal Express or Stripe and Ninja Forms.
Create an email sign-up form so your site visitors can subscribe to your MailChimp email list.
Plus much more!

Check out the introductory video…

We think you’re going to love creating custom forms for your WordPress site with Ninja Forms!

Best of all, this new course is FREE for All-Access Pass members!

If you already have an All-Access Pass, just log into your account, then visit the Ninja Forms course description page and click the large, green button that says, “Take This Course.”

That’s it! You don’t need to purchase anything else. Once you’ve enrolled in the new course, it will appear in your My Courses page.

Don’t have an All-Access Pass yet?

Purchase an All-Access Pass today and you’ll get the new Ninja Forms course, plus eight other courses — 161 videos in total! Plus, you’ll get every new course we release within the next 12 months!

In addition to WordPress basics, you’ll also learn how to optimize your site for search engines, how to sell products from your website, and much more. Learn more and buy your All-Access Pass here.

Ready to get started with Ninja Forms?

View Ninja Forms Course Details

WP Engine Recommends WP101 as a Top WordPress Education Site

We are proud to announce that WP Engine has named WP101 as a Recommended Solution for WordPress Education.

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of WP Engine. In fact, we’ve been a customer since March of 2012, back when there were just a couple thousand of us. Today, WP Engine powers hundreds of thousands of WordPress sites for more than 80,000 customers around the world!

As part of their award-winning customer experience, they filter through thousands of WordPress plugins and solutions, and then recommend the best of the best within the WP Engine Solution Center.

So, we’re incredibly honored that WP Engine has selected WP101 as a recommended WordPress education solution for WP Engine customers.

What is the WP Engine Solution Center?

The WP Engine Solution Center is a directory of carefully-vetted 3rd party services, plugins, and software that can help you optimize your WordPress site and create better digital experiences for your visitors.

Solutions in the directory are organized into 12 categories: site setup, development, speed, security, marketing, design, ecommerce, site enhancements, content, site elements (like forms, galleries, etc.), education, and service companies.

WP Engine Recommends WP101 for WordPress Education

Check out the WP Engine Solution Center →

About WP Engine

WP Engine is the world’s leading WordPress digital experience platform that gives enterprises and agencies the agility, performance, intelligence, and integrations they need to drive their business forward faster. WP Engine’s combination of tech innovation and an award-winning team of WordPress experts are trusted by over 80,000 companies across over 140 countries to provide counsel and support helping brands create world-class digital experiences. Founded in 2010, WP Engine is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has offices in San Francisco, California; San Antonio, Texas; London, England; and Limerick, Ireland.

Here’s an Exclusive Offer for WP101 Readers: Get 4 months free on any annual hosting plan at WP Engine when you use coupon code: WPE20OFF

How To Make Your WordPress Site As Secure As Possible

When it comes to creating a new WordPress site, security for that site is often overlooked or ignored. The reality is that it should be among some of the first things you tackle once you have WordPress installed on your server.

Out-of-the-box, your new WordPress site will have very few security options. For deeper layers of WordPress security, new site owners will need to consider these five areas of important site-securing options.

Securing your WordPress Site with these 5 Recommended Services and Plugins

SPAM Blocking

Akismet

Akismet is a spam fighting service that protects millions of WordPress sites from comment and contact form spam. This handy plugin also takes the inconvenience out of managing comment spam by ensuring it doesn’t interfere with your search engine rankings.

Akismet is included by default in every WordPress install, but it still needs to be activated. After installing WordPress on your server follow these instructions to set it up:

Go to the Plugins page in your administration panel and click the Activate link under the Akismet plugin.
Once activated, you’ll need to sign up for an Akismet API key on the Akismet website; a few step process that only tales minutes. We recommend using the same email you used when installing WordPress (Note: API keys should be kept private like passwords. They should never be given out to anyone).
Once you have your API key, return to the plugins page and add the key. That’s it!

By having Akismet handle all of the incoming spam, WordPress users are then freed up to write, create and engage with site visitors.

Note: Akismet offers three different pricing plans as well as a pay per call plan. If your site is for a business or if it promotes a product or service, you should pick from one of the paid plan options.

Hacking Protection (DDos, Malware, Brute Force)

Sucuri

If disaster should strike, Sucuri are pros at web monitoring and malware clean up service. Sucuri Inc. is the leading provider of web-based integrity monitoring, malware detection, and malware removal solutions delivered as a service. In simple terms, they will swoop in and end the chaos if a site gets hacked, blacklisted or infected with malware. Once WordPress security is restored, and the site is clean, Sucuri will continue to monitor it and let the site owner if another problem ever arises.

Sucuri works fast, is affordable and offers business owners a peace of mind that is priceless.

Check Out Sucuri

iThemes Security Pro

iThemes Security Pro is a powerhouse plugin that protects your WordPress site like no other security plugin. The Pro version of the plugin has an amazing array of features that will protect your content in ways you likely had not even considered:

Brute force protection
File change detection
404 detection caused by bots
Password enforcement
Bad user lockout
Database backups
Online file comparisons to identify malicious changes
Google reCAPTCHA integration

Check Out iThemes Security Pro

Use Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

Managed WordPress hosting providers offer unparalleled peace of mind when it comes to securing your website. 24/7 security monitoring, automatic updates, SPAM filtering, and free repairs if your site is hacked are just a few of their benefits. Here are some of the top providers:

WPEngine: WP Engine is great for business and ecommerce websites that need fast speed, scalability, and security. Their award-winning support is second to none. Plus, you’ll also get premium themes and block tools. Plans start at $25/month.

Check Out WPEngine

EasyWP: EasyWP is the easiest and most affordable managed WordPress hosting we’ve ever seen. Your first month is free, then it’s just $4.88/month. But EasyWP is also really fast! You can create a brand new WordPress site in less than two minutes!

Check Out EasyWP

Kinsta: The first managed WordPress host to be exclusively powered by Google Cloud Platform, Kinsta has data center locations around the globe and enterprise-level DDoS protection. Perfect for business sites, plans start at $35/month.

Check Out Kinsta

Pressable: Pressable is a world-class managed WordPress hosting provider built on the same data network as WordPress.com and WordPress VIP. With automatic scaling, Pressable is perfect for small business websites, with plans starting at $19/month.

Check Out Pressable

Nexcess: Nexcess is perfect for business and ecommerce sites, with their unique performance monitoring, automated testing for WooCommerce, and automatic plugin updates with visual comparison. Plans start at $13.30/month.

Check Out Nexcess

Backups:

Backup Buddy Plugin

Backup Buddy is the most popular choice for backing up (or moving) a WordPress site. Why backup your site? Because system failure, crashes, viruses and hacking incidents happen. Backup Buddy is an automated WordPress backup plugin that keeps your WordPress content safe by creating complete backups of your content, pages and important information. This “must have” plugin is a great way to maintain website backup files that can be kept offsite as a part of your website security measures. Worth every penny.

Check Out BackupBuddy

VaultPress

VaultPress offers WordPress security in the form of backup and security monitoring and is a trusted product of WordPress.com. A subscription-based protection tool, VaultPress offers WordPress site owners spam blocking, site migration options, site backups, file scanning, restores and automatic file repair. Pricing varies for business needs and sizes.

Check Out VaultPress

Other Best Practices for WordPress Security

Stay on Top of Updates for WordPress Software, Themes and Plugins

Making sure your WordPress site and themes are current and updated is a quick and easy way to take measures against security breaks. To help thwart hackers and eliminate security vulnerabilities, WordPress software, themes and plugins are regularly updated with the latest patches and fixes. When a new WordPress update is available, users will see a notification across the top of their dashboard area. We also cover the important features of each major update.

Plugin updates are often noted there as well, but can also be seen on the Plugins Page. Plugins that need attention will appear highlighted in a different color along with verbiage like, “There is a new version of iThemes Security available. View version 5.6.0 details or update now.” Simply clicking the linked “update now” words will automatically update the plugin.

Delete Old Themes

Any themes that live in your WordPress site that are no longer being used also means they are no longer being updated. These un-updated themes are like holes in your WordPress security fence; holes that hackers and viruses can slip through. Delete any themes you are no longer using or make sure any that you wish to keep are updated on a regular basis.

Wrap Up

The thrill and excitement of your new website will not last long if you don’t have proper layers of WordPress security measures in place. Remember, your WordPress site isn’t really safe unless you have a solid backup plan and the best security tools and options in place.

Happy Securing!

WordPress 101 is 8 Years Old Today!

Today marks the 8th anniversary of the WordPress 101 video tutorial series. What began in 2008 as a simple resource intended for our own clients has gone on to help more than a million beginners learn how to use WordPress!

Eight years ago, I was teaching my clients WordPress basics one-on-one at their offices. I had completed dozens of these “mini-workshops” and my clients loved the personalized training. But they had one common concern… “What happens a few weeks from now, after I’ve forgotten everything you taught me?”

We needed a series of WordPress video tutorials that my clients could return to at any time for a quick refresher.

So I went hunting for a set of WordPress tutorial videos that were really well produced (not full of “uhs” and “ums”) and easy for beginners to understand. Sadly, in 2008, there was only one website dedicated to WordPress tutorial videos, and they were badly out of date.

I decided to leverage my prior experience with audio engineering and video production to create a series of top-notch “WordPress 101” tutorial videos for beginners. And I knew right away that one of the biggest challenges would be keeping the videos up to date with every major upgrade to WordPress.

WordPress was at version 2.6 at the time. Since that first series of videos, we’ve updated WordPress 101 with each and every major WordPress release — a whopping 16 times so far!

We’ve come a long way since 2008. I never would have imagined that our WordPress tutorial videos would help more than a million beginners learn how to use WordPress to build and manage their own websites. Every day I feel humbled and honored by the opportunity to answer your WordPress questions and help you accomplish your online goals.

But WP101 likely wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for the help of some great friends along the way. So, in the spirit of celebrating our 8th anniversary, here’s a list of 8 important friends who have helped make WP101 what it is today…

A Huge “Thank You” to 8 Very Important Friends of WP101

1. Bill Erickson is an outstanding WordPress developer, and one of the very first people to say, “Hey, I need WordPress 101 for my clients as well! Build a membership site and I’ll send my clients to you for training.” A few years later, Bill also suggested making the WordPress 101 videos available via a plugin. So, if you use the WP101 Plugin to provide our WordPress training videos to your clients, you have Bill to thank! Thank you for your continued friendship, Bill.

2. We can’t talk about the WP101 Plugin without thanking Mark Jaquith, who created it for us. Because the WP101 Plugin serves WordPress freelancers, agencies, and hosting companies, it’s installed on hundreds of thousands of websites. That’s a lot of responsibility. Mark was my first choice, because he’s one of the Lead Developers of WordPress and has more than ten years of intensive experience with WordPress. That translates to peace of mind whenever we push out updates to the WP101 Plugin. Thanks again, Mark!

3. In July of 2012, we experienced a massive security breach due to a vulnerability caused by our hosting company at the time. The amazing team at WP Engine reached out and offered to help. They migrated WP101 to their servers and cleaned up the malware caused by the security breach. In the years since, they’ve been a reliable partner and their team — though considerably larger these days — continue to provide stellar service that enables us to serve our members better.

4. Almost exactly two years ago, Jeff King, Senior Vice President of Hosting at GoDaddy, called to discuss how we might put the WordPress 101 videos to work for their customers. We’re honored to be a part of their excellent managed WordPress hosting plans, and thrilled that our videos are helping hundreds of thousands of their customers to get up to speed with WordPress as quickly as possible. We love the culture they’re creating, and we share their passion for helping small business owners kick ass.

5. In addition to GoDaddy, the WP101 Plugin also serves hundreds of WordPress freelancers and agencies, freeing their time and enabling them to focus on what they do best, by providing our WordPress 101 tutorial videos directly in their client’s dashboard. We’re planning some major enhancements to the WP101 Plugin to better serve you and your clients, providing an even better on boarding experience for new WordPress users. So stay tuned!

6. You may not know this, but we also serve about 250 License Partners — companies who use our WordPress 101 videos on their own websites to provide basic WordPress training to their customers, reducing their support load. This program serves companies of all sizes — from large, well-known companies like WooThemes to individual freelancers and small teams. We’re proud to partner with them to provide the best WordPress training for their customers!

7. One of the most important contributors to WP101’s success in recent years is our good friend, Chris Lema. He has not only provided invaluable advice on pricing and product strategies, but also much-needed encouragement when we needed it most. Over the course of an entire year, Chris helped us evaluate membership plugins and arrive at the decision to migrate to LifterLMS earlier this year. Above all, Chris has helped us stay focused and determine the best ways to grow to better serve you!

8. Which brings us to… YOU! Today, this site serves [totalwp101MemberCounter] members. Every day, we get to answer your WordPress questions in the Q&A Forum and help you learn the best way to accomplish your online goals. We’re partnering with WordPress experts right now to create new courses for you, based on your feedback and questions. And of course, we’ll continue to update the WordPress 101 videos with each new version of WordPress, ensuring you’re always up to to date. It’s a privilege and we’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to partner with you!

There are many others who have contributed to WP101’s success over the years, to say nothing of the countless friendships Kay and I have made over the years, thanks to the WordPress community. We are who we are today because of YOU.

We’re humbled and grateful, and look forward to celebrating many, many years to come!

Hey, to say thanks to all of you, we’ve created a special 8th anniversary gift for you and your friends…

Today is @WP101’s 8th anniversary! For 8 days only, save $8 with coupon code: CELEBR8 https://wp101.com/?p=7112

Click To Tweet

$8 OFF Any Individual Course or Membership Plan

To celebrate our 8th anniversary, we’ve created a special coupon code that will knock $8 OFF any individual course or membership plan, valid during the next 8 days only: CELEBR8

Coupon Code: CELEBR8

Enter this coupon code during the checkout process to save $8 off the purchase of any individual course or membership plan! Ready to start learning WordPress?

Your turn! When did you first learn about WP101? How has WP101 helped you? We’d love to hear your story in the comments below…

What’s New In WordPress 4.5?

WordPress 4.5 was released on April 12, 2016, and contains only a few user-facing improvements to the Customizer and inline linking functionality. Still, these updates make WordPress even stronger from a branding and mobile usage standpoint.

This release is code-named “Coleman” in honor of jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. 277 individuals contributed to this release.

New Features In WordPress 4.5

Here’s a breakdown of the new features that are going to mean the most to you in version 4.5…

New Inline Link Editor

The link functionality in the visual editor has come a long way over the last couple of years. Up until version 4.5 the most exciting addition was search functionality and some linking options.

To create a link in the current version of WordPress you first highlight the text, click the “Insert/Edit Link” button and then the editor pops up.

The current link editor.

With version 4.5, the link editor has become much simpler. Rather than the link editor menu popping up immediately once you press the “Insert/Edit Link” button, you now have a single field where you can type in a page/post title and add your link. You can even type in a specific URL you want to link to, right in that same field.

How To Use The New Inline Link Editor

Here are the basic steps to for using the new inline link editor in WordPress 4.5:

Highlight the text you want to make the link.
Click the “Insert/Edit Link” button.
Type in the page/post title (or as much as you know of it) you want to link to.
Select the page/post title you want to link to.
Click the blue carriage return button to add the link.

Still need to specify options like “Open in a new tab”? You can now click the gear icon to get the familiar link editor settings to appear.

Adding a link to any post or page has now become easier than ever!

Theme Logo Support In The Customizer

The Customizer has continued to grow in WordPress 4.5 with the addition of Theme Logo Support.

This new feature will allow you to easily choose a logo that will appear above your site title and tagline, or replace the site title and tagline if you choose not to have them.

This functionality was actually part of the Jetpack plugin but is now being added to the WordPress core, which means you will be able to have more control over your website logo than ever before.

How To Use The New Theme Logo Support In The Customizer

Using the new theme logo support could not be more easy thanks to the Customizer. Here are the steps to add a site logo to your theme:

1. Go to the Appearance menu and select “Customize”.

2. Once in the Customizer, select “Site Identity”.

3. You will immediately see the option to add a logo image to your site.

4. Once you’ve uploaded your logo, you will be given options to remove or change it, and you will also see it appear in real-time on your website preview.

Keep in mind that, though there are no image size requirements for the logo, you are going to want to make sure your logo image is large enough to remain crisp and not pixelated.

New Responsive View Options In The Customizer

With the number of mobile-only internet users exceeding the number of desktop-only internet users, ensuring your WordPress website is mobile and tablet-friendly should be a top priority.

The new responsive view options feature allows you to see a preview of what your site will look like on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.

How To Use The Responsive View Options

Using this new feature could not be easier.

1. Once in the Customizer, simply go to “Site Identity”.

2. Look at the bottom of the left sidebar to find the responsive view options. Then just click on the device type you want to preview. You can choose from…

Desktop View:

Desktop view.

Tablet View:

Tablet view.

Mobile View:

Mobile view.

The new responsive view feature gives you a better sense of what your site and content is going to look like after you change elements using the Customizer. This way, you can determine what logos, colors, or widgets will look best on every device before you hit “Save & Publish”.

Other Changes Under The Hood…

As with every WordPress update, there are other minor improvements, features, and bug fixes that are included in WordPress 4.5. These include:

Additional Editor Shortcuts – Includes a few new shortcuts, like `code` for code, **bold** for bold, or ––– to insert a horizontal rule.

Comment Moderation Improvements – An enhanced experience when moderating comments, including preview with rendered formatting.

Optimization Of Image Generation – Image sizes are generated more efficiently and remove unneeded meta, while still including color profiles in Imagick, for reduced sizes of up to 50% with near identical visual quality.

Selective Refresh – A comprehensive framework for rendering parts of the customizer preview in real time. Theme and plugin authors should test their widgets specifically for compatibility with selective refresh, and note that it may ultimately be opt-in for 4.5.

Backbone And Underscore Updated To Latest Versions – Backbone is upgraded from 1.1.2 to 1.2.3 and Underscore is upgraded from 1.6.0 to 1.8.3. See the this post for important changes.

Embed Templates – Embed templates were split into parts and can now be directly overridden by themes via the template hierarchy.

New WP_Site Class – More object-oriented approach for managing sites in Multisite

Script Loader – Introduces wp_add_inline_script() for including inline JavaScript just like wp_add_inline_style() works for CSS, and better support for script header/footer dependencies.

All WP101 Videos up to Date for WordPress 4.5!

As with every release of WordPress since version 2.7 in 2008, all WP101 videos have been updated in time for the release of WordPress version 4.5 thanks to our development phase access. Now you can be sure you are learning about the most up to date version of WordPress available!

Check Out The New WordPress 4.5 Videos

Hint: Parts 13 and 14 highlight the new features!

Video Overview of What’s New…

Happy Learning!

WP101 Completes Migration to LifterLMS

After months of careful planning and deliberation, we’re thrilled to announce that WP101 is now powered by the powerful LifterLMS learning management plugin for WordPress!

We think you’re going to really going to enjoy learning WordPress with the help of the new features that LifterLMS brings to our site.

We’ll be able to better interact with you as you make your way through our tutorials, providing timely information and helpful resources along the way. You’ll be able to track your progress, earning badges and certificates for completing lessons and courses. And we’ll be able to bring new courses online more quickly!

Why is this change necessary?

First, let me share a little background. This is just the third time we’ve changed platforms since we launched WP101 in 2008. For the past several years, this site has been powered by a highly customized integration with an obscure recurring billing service.

While this system has enabled us to offer simple access to our WordPress tutorial videos as part of a membership, it lacked support for discount coupons and other basic functionality. More importantly, we’ve been unable to provide the type of learning experience we really want to deliver. Until now.

Today, WP101 serves more than 25,000 members, so it’s no small challenge to migrate to a new membership plugin. Thankfully, we benefited from the trusted advice of our good friend and long-time coach, Chris Lema. Together, we spent more than a year carefully evaluating the many options available today.

So we were absolutely thrilled to have finally discovered LifterLMS, a powerful (and free) learning management plugin for WordPress. Not only was it the first plugin that checked all the boxes for our needs, but it also quickly became apparent that the creators truly share our passion for online education.

In particular, we really resonated with their focus on restoring human interaction to online learning, something that is conspicuously absent from most online courses today.

You see, we don’t just want you to watch our videos. We want to acknowledge your progress and interact with you as you make your way through the lessons. We want to answer your questions and help you accomplish your goals for learning WordPress in the first place.

LifterLMS gives us the tools to serve you even better.

Here are some of the new features we think you’ll love…

Track your progress. The all-new “My Courses” page shows you the courses you’ve enrolled in, with a visual indicator of your progress through each one. Return at any time and pick up right where you left off.

The new “My Courses” page in action.

Earn badges and certificates. No more watching videos in a vacuum! Now you’ll earn badges and certificates for completing lessons and courses. Print and share these to verify that you’ve completed our training. Or just enjoy the rewards as an acknowledgment of your progress.

Earn badges for completing courses on WP101.

Timely help when it matters most. LifterLMS enables us to send helpful tips or links to additional resources based on lessons you’ve recently completed. This will help us strike up a conversation as you progress through each course. We’ll be able to answer any questions you might have at that point, or recommend related resources, products and services you might find helpful.

Clearly-defined courses. We’ve reorganized our entire tutorial library into individual courses, making it easier to find the specific training you need.

New courses, finally! Best of all, this model will enable us to bring new courses online more quickly. For example, we’ve partnered with noted WooCommerce expert, Daniel Espinoza, to create an in-depth course for that popular e-commerce plugin. When it’s released, you’ll be able to purchase just that course — or any of our future courses — à la carte, if you like. Better yet, buy a Lifetime Membership and get access to all our future courses for one single payment!

These guys are good!

We really want to thank the stellar team at codeBox — the creators of LifterLMS — for handling the “heavy lifting.” They not only migrated all of our site content and member data, but also provided strategic advice and much-needed encouragement along the way to help us better serve you — our members.

From the first video conference with the entire team in January, it was clear that these guys really love online education. Joshua and Chris even host a podcast where they share their best advice for creating effective online learning experiences.

If you’re interested in building your own online courses, we highly recommend LifterLMS. The plugin is 100% free, but their Boost service is perfect for individuals who don’t have time to set it up or don’t want to mess with the technical side of things.

You’ll not only benefit from the well thought-out features of the LifterLMS plugin itself, but also the wealth of knowledge and experience these guys bring to the table!

Check out LifterLMS

Go ahead. Log in and check out your new profile page!

We’ve already migrated your account to the new system and enrolled you in our current courses. You’ll enjoy access to the same video tutorials you had before this move.

When you’ve finished watching a video lesson, simply mark it as complete. You’ll be automatically redirected to the next lesson in the course. When you’ve finished all the lessons in a course, you’ll earn a badge for your profile, and a gorgeous certificate of completion you can print and share!

Of course, you can still post your questions in the members-only Q&A Forum and get answers from the creator of WP101, Shawn Hesketh, as well as other members of the community.

So log into your new “My Courses” page now and check out our latest WordPress tutorial videos. If it’s been a while, you might be surprised by what you’ll learn this time around!

Go to My Courses

Never stop learning!

Closed Captioned WordPress 101 Tutorial Videos

If you’ve been searching for quality closed captioned WordPress video tutorials, we’ve got some great news for you!

WP101 is proud to announce that our WordPress 101 tutorial videos are now closed captioned for the hearing impaired, helping even more people to have equal access to our WordPress training resources.

Ensuring that more people have access to our online learning resources for WordPress is extremely important to us. We’ve had many requests over the years to provide closed captioning for our videos. But until recently it’s been a daunting technological challenge, particularly given our commitment to continually update our videos with each new release of WordPress.

Thankfully, this is one area where technology is rapidly improving, making it possible for us to finally create closed captioned WordPress video tutorials. Our favorite screencast recording tool, ScreenFlow, now supports the creation of closed captions during the recording process.

We’ve also recently partnered with Amara — a leader in the captioning and transcription space — to create transcriptions and caption files for our videos by real, live humans, rather than automated or machine-transcribed files.

These tools make it possible for us to deliver closed captions for our videos within just a few days of releasing new videos on our site.

Will this affect our “always-up-to-date” guarantee?

Since we launched in 2008, we’ve updated and re-recorded our entire video series for every major release of WordPress — a whopping 18 times so far! We’ve always released our newly-updated videos the same day WordPress has shipped new versions.

Currently, the process of adding closed captions to our videos takes 4-8 business days. Our goal remains to release new videos on the same day as future releases of WordPress. We’re working to streamline our production process so we can continue to deliver future videos — with captions — as quickly as possible. But if we miss our deadline by a day or two, we feel that’s an acceptable trade-off to ensure we can continue to provide closed captioned WordPress tutorial videos for even more people in the future.

What about the WP101 Plugin?

We’ve got you covered! If you use our WP101 Plugin to provide our WordPress tutorial videos to your clients in their own dashboard, you’re already covered! Starting today, the videos used in the WP101 Plugin are also closed captioned. So be sure to inform your clients!

What’s next?

We’ve still got some work to do. We’re in the process of updating our tutorial videos for the Yoast SEO plugin. When we release those newly-updated videos, they will also be closed captioned. And some of our oldest videos will also be updated in the coming weeks, so we’ll hold off on closed captioning those videos until they’re updated.

Translations, anyone?
Closed captioning our videos will also enable us to do something we’ve not been able to do until now — translate our videos into other languages via subtitles! So, stay tuned for more on that front in the coming weeks.

We hope this helps to make a huge difference in the lives and education of our members with disabilities. Accessibility is a concern for us and we’ll strive to ensure that as many people as possible can access and enjoy our growing WordPress tutorial library.

Check out an example of one of our closed captioned videos below.

Click the “CC” icon to enable the captions.

What’s New in WordPress 4.0?

WordPress 4.0 “Benny” was released on September 4th, and included enhancements to the media grid and the visual editor, better language support, and true previews of embedded content.

This release is code-named “Benny” in honor of jazz legend Benny Goodman, and saw a record number of contributors during this cycle — 275 volunteers from all around the world.

New features in WordPress 4.0…
WordPress now enables you to choose a different language during installation!

Here’s a quick rundown of the new features we think you’ll love in this version…

Better Support for Languages

For years, WordPress has supported localization — running the WordPress dashboard in other languages. But until now, the process has been confusing and beyond the reach of most beginners. Thankfully, that’s now ancient history, because WordPress 4.0 presents you with a choice of languages during the installation process, making it a breeze to start using WordPress in whatever language you prefer!

Support for i18n has been expanded and improved throughout other areas of WordPress as well, making it easier than ever to use WordPress in other languages.

New Media Grid View

The Media Library now includes a gorgeous, endless grid view that allows you to browse your uploaded images more easily than ever. Plus, the new details preview (shown below) makes viewing and editing your media files a snap.

Better Plugin Discovery and Search

There are now more than 30,000 plugins in the WordPress plugin directory, and it can be overwhelming to find the right one for your needs. WordPress 4.0 makes this easier with an improved search and browsing experience. Plus, search results will return plugins translated into your language first!

Post Editor Improvements

The editor has been revamped in WordPress 4.0, and now automatically expands to fit longer content as you write. And if you frequently write longer posts, you’ll love the way the formatting toolbar now “sticks” to the top of the editor while you scroll up and down the page, ensuring your editing tools are always visible!

Real Preview of Embedded Video and More!

Finally, you can simply paste a YouTube or Vimeo URL on a new line in your post, and instantly preview it directly in the editor! It even works with Tweet URLs. Say goodbye to the ambiguous grey box; now embedding is a more accurate experience. The functional preview of your embedded content saves you time and enables you to preview precisely what your content will look like before hitting the publish button!

Plus more changes under the hood…

As always, there are also dozens of bug fixes and tiny improvements that you may never see, but provide more options and flexibility for plugin and theme developers. These include:

New Customizer Panel API — The new Customizer API now allows plugin and theme developers to add contexts, panels, and more controls to the Customizer.

More oEmbed Providers — Auto-embeds now support more services than ever before. You can now embed videos from CollegeHumor, playlists from YouTube, and TED talks. Check out all of the embeds that WordPress now supports.

Updated External Libraries — TinyMCE 4.1.3, jQuery 1.11.1, and MediaElement 2.15

SSL Improvements — You’ve probably heard that Google is assigning (slightly) higher rank to sites that use secure, encrypted HTTPS connections to transmit pages and other data. WordPress now takes a smarter approach to enforcing SSL.

For a complete list of what’s new, check out the official page on the WordPress Codex.

As always, our WordPress 101 videos are already updated for 4.0!

As we’ve done with every release since WordPress 2.7 in 2008, we began updating our video tutorial series as soon as WordPress 4.0 hit the “Release Candidate” phase of development and testing. This means we’re able to release our updated videos the same day the newest version of WordPress makes its official debut, ensuring you’re already up to date with the latest improvements in WordPress!

Check out the new WordPress 4.0 videos

HINT: Parts 4, 10, 11, and 17 highlight the newest features!

The official release video…

So, what’s your favorite new feature?

If you’ve upgraded your WordPress site already, what’s your favorite feature so far? Feel free to share in the comments below…

Yoast and WP101 Partner on WordPress SEO Training Videos

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Joost de Valk to bring you a brand new video tutorial series for the highly-popular WordPress SEO Plugin.

The WordPress SEO Plugin is the most complete SEO plugin for WordPress available today, and this new series of WordPress SEO training videos provides everything you need to optimize your site for search engines and get more visitors!

Already a WP101 member? Skip to the new videos now! →

A collaboration whose time had come.

As most of you are probably aware, we have been planning for some time to create a comprehensive video tutorial series for the excellent WordPress SEO Plugin by Joost (“Yoast”) de Valk.

As luck would have it, our timing perfectly coincided with Joost’s own plans to create a new video training series for his plugin. He reached out to us just before we began production on the new series, and we jumped at the chance to collaborate with him on the creation of the videos.

Joost was tremendously helpful during the scriptwriting process, which is often the most tedious part of creating effective tutorial videos. Once scripts were approved, we began production of the videos themselves.

The result is a 17-part series of WordPress SEO training videos that are not only the most accurate, but also filled with tips, best practices, and expert SEO advice from Joost himself.

Where else can you get that level of training directly from the creator of the plugin?

Going beyond the “what” to explain the “why”.

Throughout the creation of these videos, our goal was to not only explain the functions and features of the plugin itself, but also why those settings are important, and what effect they have on search engine results.

There have been hundreds of tutorials dedicated to this highly-popular WordPress plugin, but most provide little more than a tour of the settings panels, leaving the viewer more confused than when they began. Our goal from the beginning was to provide real-world, practical guidance that will actually help your site perform better in search engine rankings.

Covers WordPress SEO Premium, too!

Our series also covers the added features in the WordPress SEO Premium plugin, which goes beyond the free WordPress SEO plugin to help you get even more out of your WordPress site.

At the moment, these include a Redirect Manager (watch the video ) that enables you to easily redirect old URLs to new ones, and solve common issues directly within your WordPress dashboard. It also includes integration with Google Webmaster Tools (watch the video ), which allows you to retrieve crawl errors from Google and fix them without leaving your WordPress dashboard.

But even more important, buying WordPress SEO Premium also gives you access to expert advice from the Yoast support team. You can email them your questions about the plugin and they’ll assist you!

Check out the WordPress SEO Premium plugin for yourself and get a team of experts on your side!

Two ways to watch our WordPress SEO training videos…

The WordPress SEO training videos are available right now to all WP101 members as part of your normal subscription. Log in and watch the new videos right away! →

If you’re not already a WP101 member, why not sign up today and get access to ALL our current videos, including the new WordPress SEO series, plus any future videos we create?

View Pricing and Signup Options

Don’t want access to the rest of our videos? You can still watch the WordPress SEO videos within the WordPress SEO Premium plugin itself. Upgrade to the Premium version of the plugin and you’ll get the added tools mentioned above, plus the 17 tutorial videos, and premium support.

Details on the WordPress SEO Premium plugin here.

Stay tuned!

We’ve got plenty more videos planned for production, and those videos will be available to all current members. So why not become a WP101 member today and get access to all our current and future videos?

What’s New in WordPress 3.9?

WordPress 3.9 was released yesterday, and brought with it a number of enhancements to the media editing experience. This release was the product of hard work from a record number of contributors (267), and is code-named “Smith” in honor of jazz organist Jimmy Smith.

Check out this brief video for a quick overview of the new features in WordPress 3.9…

New features in WordPress 3.9…

Here’s a quick rundown of the new features we think you’ll love in this version…

Improved Visual Editor

The visual editor has been upgraded to the latest version of TinyMCE, which improves the speed of the editor, accessibility, and better support for mobile devices. You can now easily add a horizontal rule, and the nasty “Paste from Word” function is no longer necessary. Just paste content from your word processor (yes, we’re talking about Microsoft Word) directly into the visual editor. WordPress will clean it automatically.

Easily Edit Images

If you frequently add images to your blog posts and pages, you’ll love the new image editing tools. You can now scale images directly in the editor, without having to visit an extra pop-up editor. When you need to edit the image, you’ll find it much easier to crop and rotate your images while editing posts.

Drag and drop images directly into the editor!

No need to click the “Add Media” button to upload images. Now, you can just grab them from your desktop and drag them into the editor.

Actual Gallery Previews

Until now, photo galleries were depicted in the editor as a nondescript blue box; to preview what your photo gallery would actually look like in place, you had to visit the post, then return to make changes, go back to see what that looked like… etc. That’s finally a thing of the past! Galleries display a beautiful grid of images right in the editor, just like they will look in your final post.

Audio and Video Playlists

This release also brings support for audio and video playlists, so you can showcase your music and video clips. The process is just as easy as creating a photo gallery, but it’s also quite extensible, with support for additional features through the media options. Check out this post to see just what’s possible.

Live Widget and Header Previews

Okay, this just may be my favorite new feature in WordPress 3.9. You can now add, edit, and rearrange your site’s widgets right in the theme customizer, and preview your changes in real-time! No more “save … preview … edit … preview … etc.” — just make your changes live and then save them when you’re happy with the results. This is an enormous time-saver!

You’ll also love the improved header image tool, which lets you upload, crop, and manage headers right in the Theme Customizer.

Gorgeous New Theme Browser

There are thousands of themes available on the WordPress Theme Directory, but what good is that if you can’t find the theme you’re looking for? The completely redesigned theme browser makes it easier than ever to browse featured themes, find the newest themes, or even filter search results by color, layout, or other features.

You can even browse full-size previews, and when you find a theme you like, install it with just a click.

Much more under the hood…

As always, there are also hundreds of tiny improvements that you may never see, but bring increased flexibility for theme and plugin developers. For a more in-depth look at those improvements, check out this post.

Yes, our WordPress 101 videos are already updated for 3.9!

As always, we began updating and re-recording our video tutorial series as soon as WordPress 3.9 hit the “Release Candidate” phase of development and testing. This enables us to release our updated videos the same day the newest version of WordPress makes its official debut, ensuring you’re always up to date with the latest improvements in WordPress!

Check out the new WordPress 3.9 videos

HINT: Parts 9 and 14 highlight the best new features!

What’s your favorite new feature?

If you’ve upgraded your WordPress site to the latest version, we’d love to hear from you! What’s your favorite feature so far? Sound off in the comments below…

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